Tuesday, July 10, 2012

TEPCO is sending 11 TEPCO employees and one robot (Survey Runner, which looks like a smaller version of Quince and has already gone inside Reactor 2's Torus Room in April this year - photo, video) down to the basement of Reactor 3 to survey the inside of the Torus Room. Planned radiation exposure for the human workers is 8 millisieverts.

No information of how long each worker will have to stay there to assist their robot co-worker. They won't go inside the Torus Room, as the very high radiation levels are expected inside. Instead, Survey Runner will go. The human workers will carry the robot through the narrow passage in the basement to the Torus Room door, which they will open for the robot.

8 millisieverts of radiation exposure. Before the Fukushima accident, it was rare even for the nuclear plant workers to get 1 millisievert exposure in one year. Now, the workers may get 8 years' worth of radiation in a day's work at Fukushima I Nuke Plant.

Purpose: As water leak investigation and water stop measure implementation are planned for the area from PCV / Reactor Building to the Turbine Building, it is critical to understand the current condition of the Torus Room. A robot will investigate the inside of Torus Room with high radiation dose to obtain inputs to be leveraged for planning the water leak investigation and water stop measures.

Investigation Items

The following will be done in the Torus Room in Unit 3 Reactor Building basement.
-Visual confirmation (Acquire photos and moving images)
-Dose rate measurement
-Collect sound samples in the Torus Room

Additional maximum exposure coming from nuclear generation etc. for common population was 1 mSv/yr in Japan, before Fukushima. In theory still is.For nuclear workers there are several limits; I believe one of them was 100 mSv for the whole life of the worker, temporarily raised to 250 after the accident (did workers get stronger?). Also there might have been a 5mSv limit that would grant a period of rest.

This is to put the 8mSv in a more precise perspective.

Having said so, walking volountarily in there knowing that the plan is to take 8mSv requires a fair dose of heroism.Beppe

Isn't the 8 millisieverts a guess based on what they think the exposure should be? I'm sure the salaried nuclear workers rarely saw 1 millisievert of exposure pre-Fukushima but I bet that wasn't and isn't the case for the Burakumin workers who do the actual dirty work around the plants.

I have been reading that the Japanese nuclear industry is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find enough workers to continue the cleanup and one of the methods they are using is to fudge the exposure numbers for the contract labor. Add to this many Burakumin hide their exposure levels in order to work longer hours because they need the money more than their health.

Saying 180 teams is tantamount to saying they cannot go in there -- unless they start using the Chernobyl model; forget the robots and involve a huge number of people: pay them for 30min work and see them again in a year.Also, I believe there were talks about revising the regulations for radiation "workers" (radiation cannon fodder?), including those handling radioactive debris but I do not know how they have been changed. I would not be surprised if they allowed more exposure.Beppe

@5:48 I doubt very much that if they get 20mSv (one year max exposure) they will get one year pay. Furthermore, unless workers are hired permanently, their employer will not have to find them another job for the rest of the year and, assuming the temp worker is someone in his sixties out of a job, there is a fair chance he will not be a burden on the national health system either :(Beppe

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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